Dating app Hinge wants to make ghosting disappear
A new feature called Your Turn is aimed at helping online daters start and keep conversations going.
- She has a master's degree in journalism from Syracuse University.
Hinge doesn't want you to forget to respond to your matches.
Where did you go?
It's a question online daters will shout into the ether at some point when the person they were talking to or matched with goes silent.
Dating app Hinge wants to diminish that disappearing act -- ghosting -- with a new feature out Wednesday called Your Turn.
Your Turn reminds you if it's, well, your turn to respond to a message. And if you haven't begun talking yet, it also lets you invite the other person to start the conversation.
"We're empowering all of our members by letting them decide who starts the conversation," said Hinge founder and CEO Justin McLeod in a statement.
You can also hide a conversation and resurface it if the other person responds. Hinge describes it as akin to email archiving.
It's tough to say just how common ghosting is. A 2016 report from dating site Plenty of Fish found that about 80 percent of millennial users said they'd been ghosted. Coffee Meets Bagel also rolled out antighosting features for its premium version in March, including read receipts and an activity report showing things like how long it takes people to reply.
Hinge, meanwhile, found that 23 percent of members surveyed flat out forget to start conversations with their matches sometimes, and when the feature was tested in London and Washington, that forgetfulness dropped off by 25 percent.
Your Turn is available in the US, UK, Canada, India and Australia.
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